I love to make soups in the winter, and have often written about the wonders of homemade broth. I’ve never cared much for any vegetable broth that I have tasted, and I like the deep savoriness and the economy and thrift of making meat and chicken broth. But recently, more or less by accident, I did discover an alternative. I was experimenting with my abundant supply of water kefir, and was cooking it down to make a syrupy glaze of the type that I have enjoyed making out of kombucha. About the original idea, all I can say is please don’t try this with kefir, because the result is rather dreadful. However, having tasted the product of one pot, I turn the heat off under the other one, which had been reduced to a little more than half its original volume. I tasted, thought, added some salt, and had something that tasted savory and surprisingly like chicken broth. Cooked with some aromatics and herbs, the resemblance would be even more striking.

I tried the same experiment with some water kefir made with coconut sugar, thinking that the deeper color and flavor would be attractive in this context. But to my surprise, the faint bitterness that is detectable as an undertaste in brown sugar or coconut sugar was greatly exaggerated in the finished broth, to the point that I threw it out. So save yourself some time and trouble and use plain sugar when making kefir that you intend to cook down.

Since I remain obsessed with fermentation months after first reading the Noma Guide to Fermentation, I decided to try combining various fungi both microscopic and macroscopic in a mushroom broth. I had a quart of broth made from boiling down 2 quarts of water kefir. I started with butter, which made my soup vegetarian, but if you wish to use olive oil or some other vegetable oil instead it will be vegan. Heat about 3 tablespoons of your chosen fat in a small heavy sauce pan, and sauté one large or two small cloves of garlic finely chopped and one small onion sliced thin. Cook them over medium low heat, stirring frequently, until they are thoroughly cooked, soft, and a bit caramelized. Put in 3 tablespoons of mushroom powder. I used dried and powdered Sullius that I had gathered, but the most commonly available powdered mushroom is porcini. Sautée the powder for a few minutes, and add a quart of broth to your pan. Bring to a boil, and then turn the heat down to simmer. Now stir in 2 tablespoons of white miso paste. Taste for saltiness. You might want more miso, but taste it first. I am working on making my own miso, but a good grade of white miso from your nearest Asian market is fine. Simmer the soup for 15 to 20 minutes over low heat.

The final step is to smooth it out. You can do this with a stick blender, but in my opinion there is no alternative to a Vitamix blender to turn your soup into pure velvet. Make sure you know how to handle hot liquids in your blender without creating a sort of fluid explosion. When the soup is completely smooth, return it to the pan, heat gently, taste for seasoning, grind in a little fresh pepper, and serve.

There is nothing quite like the process of fermentation to produce a rich, meaty savor without the use of meat. In this basic recipe, I was experimenting with fermentation as a way to make a vegan or vegetarian product highly satisfying. But if you are not a vegan or vegetarian, there is no reason to feel limited. You can start with bacon fat if you want to, or add chunks of leftover cooked meat, or finish it with a dash of good sherry or a swirl of cream or both. Sautéed mushrooms would be a great addition.

It interested me that despite use of miso, this soup doesn’t taste identifiably Asian. It just tastes good. If you want something that leans more Asian, you could add a piece or two of kombu to the kefir for a few minutes as it cooks down and finish the bowls with some diagonally slivered scallions.

Early this spring I was putting down straw mulch around some new plantings in the shade and decided to order and incorporate some spawn for the winecap mushroom, Stropharia rugosa-annulata. I have never grown or tasted this mushroom before, and so I was very excited yesterday when a young friend pointed out “a giant mushroom” under one of the new little saplings. My first winecap was a healthy 6 1/2 inches in diameter. I cooked it plainly in butter with a little bit of salt, and it was perfectly nice but I would say not significantly better than store-bought cremini mushrooms. Still, my homegrown mushrooms are deep organic and came from my own land, so of course I favor them, and they benefit the soil and the growing plants as well as me.

The advantage of Stropharia is that it is fairly rugged and easy to grow. I am told that it grows much better in deciduous wood chips than in straw, and at the very least I should have mixed in some deciduous wood chips or put some on top, but it is one of those things that I meant to get around to and haven’t done yet. Maybe I will still top up with some wood chips.

They grow well in the paths between garden beds, and once you have them established I am assured that you can move shovelfuls of the substrate around and start new mushroom beds pretty much at will. The presence of fungi can be very important to the health of plants, and for much more on this fascinating subject I recommend reading “Mycelium Running.”

Here’s an important safety bulletin: just because you “planted” mushrooms in a specific spot, it is not safe to assume that any mushroom that comes up in that spot is what you planted. There is absolutely no substitute for knowing the identification points for the mushroom you planted as well as for any poisonous look-alikes. The mushrooms that I grow in my garden, oyster mushrooms and Stropharia, are easy to identify so this is not a difficult task.

The hugeness of the Stropharia mushrooms can make your whole garden seem Wonderland-like and magical. It might not be the very best eating mushroom there is, but it is quite wonderful to have a visitor gasp and say “Ooh, what is THAT?”

Early this spring I was mulling over the issue of a long narrow patch of ground that gets water from my garden sprinkler but doesn’t produce anything. I decided to try outdoor mushrooms. It was a fairly foolish idea because the area is fully exposed to our desert sun, but I do not lack for the damnfool quality. So in March I covered the strip 10″ deep with loose straw, wet it down, spread a bag each of oyster and King Winecap spawn, and paid it no further attention. The oyster spawn produced nothing, unsurprisingly. But this morning I found a tiny baby Stropheria putting a head up to have a look around.
I hope it goes without saying that you don’t eat any mushroom without carefully identifying it, even if you planted mushrooms in that very spot. Get at least 2-3 good mushroom field guides and don’t eat unless you are 100% confident of your ID. A mushroom-loving writer once remarked that ” There are old mushroom eaters and there are bold mushroom eaters, but there are no old bold mushroom eaters.” Take it to heart. Anyway, unless I get more mushrooms I will let this one go to spore rather than picking it.
Even if I never harvest any mushrooms the project is worth it, because the presence of a small fruiting body above ground indicates the presence of a large mycelium entity that you don’t see. I can’t encourage people enough to read Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets to understand the importance of this.
My spawn came from Fungi Perfecti. They have a fascinating array of kits if you want to stick your toe into mushroom growing, and they offer a wide variety of spawn and instructional books if you want to produce mushrooms on a bigger scale.

Spotting these mushrooms on top of a pile of decomposing horse manure this morning reminded me to encourage everyone to read Paul Stamets’s book Mycelium Running if they haven’t already read it. It’s a marvelous book about the activities of the entrancing kingdom of fungi, and incidentally it’s a good read. There is no effective way to understand an ecosystem without understanding what the fungi within it are doing. I use them as an indicator when planting into manure: I spread feed bags and other sources of thick paper on an area that I want to reclaim, pile up manure from my neighbor’s horses a minimum of a foot thick, flatten the top of the pile and wet it down thoroughly, and then wait, wetting it again every few days. When I see mushrooms in the early morning before our desert sun burns them away, I can plant large seeds like winter squash into the pile with every expectation that they will grow.